fantasy football mock draft

Whose Values Are They Anyway?
By Virginia Bola, PsyD, Fri Dec 9th

First there was the sight of Janet Jackson's pastie-adornedbreast at the Superbowl, then Nicollet Sheridan's towel-droppingscene on Monday Night Football. A public outcry followed,deploring the obsessively sexual orientation of advertising,entertainment, and the media as a whole.

As the debates rage, a core question must arise: if sex is knownto sell anything, who is doing the buying?

Public Relations and marketing gurus give the public what theycrave. If they don't, they are out of a job. How many newviewers will Desperate Housewives gain because of the uproarover their ad? Thousands? A million or two? And who enjoyed thegratuitous nudity? Those who "missed it" on Monday NightFootball were able to indulge their curiosity as the tape wasreplayed and replayed ad nauseum. Who in America has not seen itby now? Surely only the sightless and the occasional hermitcould have missed it.

So what does that say about the current state of U.S.

morality?We are not all depraved, immoral, addicted to pornography, nornecessarily in favor of public sexual displays. We are simplycurious people who are still in a reaction phase to a longhistory of sexual repression. After the strait jacket of thepuritan period and the social constraints of the following 300years, the pendulum is swinging as it always has. It makes awide arc until slowly returning to the center.

Those who openly seek to legislate morality would do well torecall the disastrous social experiment of prohibition, imposedby a righteous and vocal minority, and its permanent legacy ofcrime, murder, and corruption.

About the author:Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deepinterests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performedtherapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied theresults of cultural forces and employment on the individual. Theauthor of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: AnUnemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker'sEdge, she can be reached at http://www.virginiabola.com